


Cold-Blooded Murder of the English Tongue

by Prochytes



Category: Mad Dogs (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 13:22:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quinn was a pedant first and foremost. What he was at the finish didn’t bear thinking about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold-Blooded Murder of the English Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the finale. Title from My Fair Lady. Written for dark_fest on LJ in 2011 .

In the end – and “in the end” was exactly the sort of weasel filler, the sort of pointless fucking phrasal throat-clearing, that the man himself despised – in the end, the friendship of a lifetime boiled down to broccoli.

 

Bad food defines the UK student experience. Maybe at Oxbridge they gorged themselves on swan stuffed with widgeon, or similar. At KCL in the Eighties, you jumped through your spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce the same as anybody else. Call it a gesture of solidarity. So it was as Baxter sat in the cafeteria, contemplating greens which sat on his plate like a Titan’s bogey, that a voice broke in upon his reverie.

 

“Excuse me. You look like an educated fellow. Would you kindly assist me in putting this heathen straight on a point of English?”

 

The voice instantly set Baxter on edge. It was affected. Full of itself, to the point of bursting. Baxter already suspected that its owner was indulging in self-parody, but from what he had heard, he could not be sure. This might be some upper-class tosser, throwing his weight around.  

 

A Fresher is entitled to vote and buy booze legally, but his schooldays are still lounging behind the corner, waiting to leap out and push him over. There was a vein of aggro in Baxter that bullies had learned not to tap. But that was a rep you had to re-establish at Uni. He wasn’t sure he could be arsed.

 

Baxter looked up. Mr. Plum-in-my-Gob turned out to be a big blond bastard. He sprawled back in his chair at the next table, disposing his bulk with the negligent grace that some big men can manage. Beyond him sat another guy with darker hair, who had to be the “heathen”. Baxter focussed on this bloke’s expression: he appeared exasperated but amused at the other’s raillery. It did not look, to Baxter, like he was just faking complaisance until an opportunity arose to fuck the blond bloke up. Baxter relaxed a bit.

 

“I’ll do my best. What’s your problem?”

 

“In a nut-shell,” the dark one piped up, “broccoli.”

 

“Broccoli,” the blond one objected, “isn’t a nut.”

 

“No, but you are, Quinn. It’s pronounced ‘broccoli’. Two ‘o’s. That’s how the Italians say it. Only lazy-arsed types like you turn the second ‘o’ into an ‘a’.”

 

“So you say, Alvo. But I’m asserting the prerogative of a free-born Englishman to pronounce it like it’s bloody English.” He turned back to Baxter. “What do you think, my friend?”

 

Baxter smiled, despite himself. “I think you two need a dictionary.”

 

“The IPA.” The big bloke smacked his forehead. “Of course. You, sir, are a genius, and I’ve been remiss with the introductions.” He cocked his chastized bonce at the darker man. “This reprobate is Alvo. Pronounced ‘Alvooooo’.”

 

“And this is Quinn. Pronounced ‘wanker’.”

 

The blond, Quinn, raised his hand in acknowledgment. “Guilty as charged. How about you?”

 

“Baxter.”

 

“Good to meet you, Baxter.” Quinn rubbed his chin. “Now, if we can just lay our hands on a dictionary...”

 

The IPA was not (as Baxter had vaguely conjectured) a Loyalist splinter-group with an unexpected sideline as Grammar Nazis. It was the International Phonetic Alphabet. Baxter, who was at a loose end until he had to hook up with Rick for a pint in the evening, found himself accompanying Quinn and Alvo in search of the requisite tomes.

 

Quinn was prepared to send up his quest for the orthology of “broccoli”. That did not lessen the zeal with which he pursued it. Baxter saw this in the expression Quinn wore as he stood in the University Library, contemplating the volume of the _Oxford English Dictionary_ which he had deposited beside a twist of orange peel and somebody’s abandoned Rubik’s Cube. It was as if he was hunting some certainty, some consummation invisible to others, in the minute distinctions between an [ə] and an [o].

 

***

 

“Woody says that you’re selling Eastern antiquities, now.” Quinn took a swig of bitter, and sat back. “So tell me, then: what’s an Asian urn?”

 

Baxter squinted blearily at him. “I’m fairly sure that’s racist, Quinn.”

 

“I’m recycling. That gag doesn’t work as well on Grecian urns any more. Not since the sons of Hellas embraced the euro like the rest of them. We’re getting past it, Baxter. Even the currency of our quips is obsolete.”

 

Baxter shifted in his seat. He wanted to get on to the subject of Alvo’s villa. That, after all, was why he and Quinn had met up for this drink.

 

He had hoped that the hardy perennial of their conversations in recent years, How Woody Was Bearing Up, would offer an easy intro to the topic _du jour_. Quinn, however, had proved recalcitrant. Platitudes ( _Time’s a great healer; Taking each day as it comes_ ), like toasts, demanded a certain reciprocity. They only really worked if your interlocutor offered up platitudes of his own to clink against them.  

 

But Quinn just kept going off on those pedantic rants of his. It was not as clear to Baxter as it would once have been that his friend was sending himself up. The gestures towards wryness now were fewer, and more desultory. Self-parody, Baxter suddenly realized, was an outfit only the young could wear with comfort. As we get older, we soften and sag into the spaces where ironic distance used to be.

 

And so a middle-aged psychology lecturer held forth, while Baxter thought about a young man, pale in the light from the library window, beside the bright remnant of an orange peel and the motley of a Rubik’s Cube, scanning the _OED_ with restless eyes. That restlessness, at least, Quinn had not lost. His fingers drummed on the table-top as he scowled into his pint.   

 

“Drachmas, adieu. Still, I don’t think many of us will mourn the peseta.”

 

Baxter saw his opening. “Did you know that Alvo had property in Majorca?”

 

“Can’t say I did.”

 

“That was a bit of a bolt from the blue. Where do you think he found the money?”

 

Quinn shrugged. “He always was a resourceful so-and-so.”

 

“Well, you may be disinterested in his finances...”

 

“I’m uninterested. ‘Disinterested’ would mean I was impartial.”

 

Baxter frowned. “Enough with your meaningless distinctions, Quinn. I’m being serious, here.”

 

“So am I.” Quinn leaned forward. “Distinctions are all we _have_ , Baxter. You should know that. You’re supposed to be the fucking lawyer.”

 

Baxter swallowed. Quinn’s eyes were fixed on his, willing him to understand. But he couldn’t. Baxter had never been able to follow Quinn when he was like this. His brain just wasn’t built that way. Quinn’s life of the mind had always seemed a bit... well... mental.

 

“Was,” he eventually managed, hating how inadequate it sounded. “I _was_ the fucking lawyer.”

 

Quinn looked sad. Behind his eyes, Baxter imagined that he could see the thoughts twisting around each other like that Rubik’s Cube of long ago, the patterns coming together and separating, ratcheting towards the elusive final answer.

 

 ***

 

In the end (and by this Baxter meant the proper end, the finale, the _ne plus_ sodding _ultra_ ), in the end, it was the death of the words that should have given away the change in Quinn. They were all running around like blue-arsed flies, trying to forget how Alvo’s brains had crusted on the carpet like the ridge around trays in canteens which have held hot raspberry crumble for too long. And Quinn just lay there by the poolside, saying nothing.

 

When he did speak, before they made the break for freedom, it was to use someone else’s words.

 

_Be true to yourself._ That sounded like something from _Hamlet_ , Baxter hazily recollected. It made no fucking sense that he could see. To what self did Quinn think he was being true? Had he always known, or had he only just worked it out? Could Baxter, if he had ever found the guts to go that extra mile, have worked it out as well?

 

It was a long walk, from the Balearics to Elsinore.

 

And then there was that last whirl of motion. They were all scrambling for dear life into the car, and, as they fumbled for seat-belts,  Baxter knew. Quinn had killed all the words he had loved because there really wasn’t anything left to be said. The Rubik’s Cube had finally clicked to present a blank white face, which slid below the surface of the pool, and was seen no more.  

 

FINIS


End file.
